Poverty

FROM POVERTY, WORK AND OBLIGATION TO AFFLUENCE, RIGHTS AND POSSIBILITIES

Julie Kvaale, 3STS2, Spring 2011

How did poverty, work and obligation in the early 19^th century in England become to affluence, rights and possibilities in the late 20^th century Welfare state? What different does it makes that we have a welfare state, and how did Charles Dickens express his meanings about child labour through his book called “Oliver Twist”?

In The first decades of the Industrial Revolution there was little or no focus on children’s or poor workers rights in Victorian England. Bad conditions and long days at work was what were waiting for the workers and the children when they came to their jobs. It was normal to work on factories and for the children including the two early mention points, it was normal to work as chimney sweepers. Chimney sweepers where persons that where cleans chimneys for living. The children of the poor were expected to help towards the family budget, often working in dangerous jobs for low wages. Small children were employed to scramble machinery to retrieve bobbins, and children did also work in coal mines, crawling through tunnels too narrow and low for adults. Children did also work as errand boys; shoe blacks and by selling matches, flowers and other cheap goods, they got exactly enough money to survive from day to day. The working hours were long and builders might work 64 hours a week in summer and 52 hours a week in winter. Many young girls worked as prostitutes, mainly girls between 15 and 22 years. Children as young as three were put to work. In coal mines children began work at the age of 5 and generally died before the age of 25. It was a tragic period for poor workers and children labours. The way they were threaded and the conditions of the jobs were awful.

A famous writer named Charles Dickens, worked at the age of 12 in a blacking factory, with his family in a debtors’ prison. In 1840 only about 20 percent of the children living in London had any schooling. By 1860 about half of the children between 5 and 15 were in school, including Sunday school. We can assume out from this, that almost all the children not going to school between 1840-1860th were children labours. Charles Dickens did through his literature contribute to opening the eyes of the public. His roman that is most famous for contain the theme “children labour” and focus on poor people is the one named “Oliver Twist”. Oliver Twist is about an orphan who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker, from whence he escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Oliver is led to their criminal trainer Fagin, naively unaware of their unlawful activities. He makes the children steel money, scarfs and other thing with value, so he and “his” children can eat a lot of food and sell the things for money. I would say that this is wrong, but in some way, it was right. Steeling isn’t a good thing, don’t misunderstand me. But what were they going to do? Die because they didn’t have any money? Of course they could have worked some place and earned the money in a fair way, but they didn’t have a lot of choices in that time. The book shows us have the community was and Dickens also gives us his views on what he think about child labour and how the society worked at that time through this book.

In the book we may see a lot of examples of how the Victorian England really was. Poorness led to that a lot of people, especially children became thieves and had to steel to survive. In Oliver Twist, we can also see a lot of contrasts from how it was and to the welfare state that we have today. People didn’t care if they saw a poor child sitting on the street, begging for some money so he/she and her/his family could but themselves some food and survive the day. In this book, Dickens makes considerable use of symbolism. The many symbols Oliver faces are primarily good versus evil, with evil continually trying to corrupt and exploit good, but good winning out in the end, where he finds his grandfather which is the mayor of the city, and he gets the chance to live a life as a happy child with his grandparents in a luxury life. Another important symbol in the book is food. Oliver’s odyssey begins with a simple request for more food, and Mr. Bumble shocked exclamination suggests that Oliver may be seeking more than just additional food. We can also find a lot of contrast words during that time an in our days. Poverty, work and obligation versus affluence, rights and possibilities are some of them. Think of the possibilities that we have today comparing to the possibilities they had on that time. It can’t even be compared.

Unlike today we have the welfare state. “A welfare state is a concept of government where the state plays the primary role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life. The general term may cover a variety of forms of economic and social organization.

There are two main interpretations of the idea of a welfare state:

• A model in which the state assumes primary responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. This responsibility in theory ought to be comprehensive, because all aspects of welfare are considered and universally applied to citizens as a “right.”
• Welfare state can also mean the creation of a “social safety net” of minimum standards of varying forms of welfare. “ – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state

We have the child welfare and the state to handle cases where economy or people not taking care of their children are a theme. Today we also have child support which the children get from the day they are born and to the day they turn 18 years. In Norway, we also have free school and we do not have to pay any money if we get ill and have to have help from the hospital. The tax that we pay covers all these things, and the way our community works with the fact that people are getting money, insurance etc, makes every people feel that discrimination do not exist in our community. As we say “we are all are equal for the law”.

People that have a lot of money have no more benefits than others. In the Victorian England, there was a big difference between poor and rich. Rich people didn’t care about poor people. That was the way that it was. There were no laws that said that child labour was aloud, but in 1802 and 1819 Factory Acts were passed to regulate the working hours of workhouse children in factories and cotton mills to 12 hours per day. This was the first step against child labour. There was also a law that was adopted in 1833 by the British Parliament called Factory Acts.

The Federal Government has also a law against child labour. It restricts when children can work and what jobs they can do. Teens hired for nonagricultural employment (which is just about everything other than farm work) must be at least fourteen. Other child labour law restrictions, regulating the type of positions young workers can hold and the type of work they can do are also in effect.

But still, child labour exists in this world. It can be factory work, mining, prostitution, quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents’ business, having one’s own small business (for example selling food), or doing odd jobs. Some children work as guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (where they may also work as waiters). Other children are forced to do tedious and repetitive jobs such as: assembling boxes, polishing shoes, stocking a store’s products, or cleaning. A case that is still discusses is the one about the minerals that Nokia and Sony Ericson uses in their batteries in their mobile phones. Minerals from mines in Congo, where children are working, and people are risking their lives for their job. Even if it’s not so much children labour around in the rich countries today where we have the welfare state, it still remains in countries like Africa, India, and South-America etc. Not every law can stop the case it stands for. The United Nations and the International Labor Organization consider child labour explorative, with the UN stipulating, in article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child that:

“States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”

The welfare state has turned a lot of countries in the world to countries that has a system that helps people live and contribute in the society. Without the welfare state, I think that a lot of children and also normal people would have been working under bad conditions as they did for 100 of years ago. We have a lot of laws that gives every human it own rights and there are also laws for working places, families and in the community generally. The human rights are an example on this. Without laws, the whole world would have been a complete mess with a lot of illegal monuments that we would call it today. If we see pictures from that time, and pictures from now, we wouldn’t even believe that it was the same world that we were living in. The welfare state must be the smartest system that is invented for communities and the fact that it gives all the people the right to could live with the same base, and have the same equal rights and possibilities no matter if they are poor or rich.

 Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_era

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations

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